


Dreamcatcher

by notaluu



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, Introspection, Romance, Semi-unrequited love, Subtle Romance, Tragedy, confession fic, post-merge, time skip, vacuo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29820048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaluu/pseuds/notaluu
Summary: He knows he will never be able to reach across that distance and touch her cheek with adoration. He knows he will never move her with a kiss or melt into her to forget the world they are both meant to protect.All of that. All of that would only bring a searing pain of memories and bad experiences. All of that would remind him of cold white hands on his skin, on his face, red eyes staring back at him that he can never unsee. And he doesn’t dare guess the pain it would cause her, cause Ruby, the present blooming Rose in front of him, if he touched her with Oscar’s hands.She might wither right there in his grasp.So all he can do is touch her with his words, his stories, and his dreams.As always.
Relationships: Ozma/Ruby Rose (RWBY)
Kudos: 5





	Dreamcatcher

**Author's Note:**

> Little bit of a warning: this is written before episode 10's airdate so it assumes the merge happens on a 60-40 basis.  
> This is also built on the assumption that Roses, like Oz, reincarnate--as seems to be hinted in some aspects of the canon text.  
> Have fun~

A white butterfly settles in the window.

It basks its wings in the bright sunlight, fluttering them quietly, and it is only the movement that distinguishes it from the light to the observant.

Oz straightens in his seat at the sight of it, the message its presence brings.

Somewhere to his right Nora stretches like a cat, still caught in the warn laziness that had caught them all in the hot Vacuo weather. Waiting, waiting, waiting. She yawns and blinks up at him, with wide eyes of summer skies.

“What now?” she complains.

“I have to go,” Oz says, getting up from his seat.

“Aw. And I was just about to braid Ren’s hair, too.”

He grins down at the mischief that strikes across her face, a flash of amusement she cannot contain even when the opportunity seems dwindling. “Don’t let me stop you,” he assures her. “I’m not going far.”

Still, there is a protectiveness to his team these days that have not diminished with time or familiarity, and though Nora falls back onto the couch, Jaune puts down the book he’d been studying at a nearby table.

“Oz…”

“Let him go,” Ren cuts him off.

Pink eyes catch green, understanding flashing between them.

“He’s not lying when he says he won’t be long.”

Oz smirks and jumps from his position, finally free to move. “If it would make you feel more at ease,” he says, grinning at his own cryptic words, “you may stand by at the door. Don’t bring weapons. It would be a rather awkward welcome of old friends.”

As Nora and Jaune share confused looks, Oz grabs his coat and turns his back to them. The dark green cloth flutters in the wind, its golden rim catching the light of a single white butterfly following him out the door.

A door which shuts on Nora’s confused “wait, Ren. Who’s coming?”

He’s excited.

He shouldn’t be.

She’s done something reckless again and he should scold her for it.

He won’t, of course. It’s been too long, and even if he hadn’t been sure he would see her again in this lifetime, like a rose dropped in the darkest pool she had looked at him with only sorrow in her beautiful silver eyes last time.

Grief had been all he’d given her, an unanswered longing all she could speak in return.

The moon had set on a night so dark and full of loneliness, and a sun had risen in her place that she had not wanted to see alone. That she had not wanted to see whole.

It’s a different sun from the one she knows, one she, like Oz himself, had never wished to meet. And though he is always partially what she wants, he is never fully that.

Not this time either.

Not Ozma.

Not her Professor.

And not Oscar either.

Somewhere in between all of that is Oz, a new sun. Reborn again. Different and changed.

Once again he could not remain the same boy she had fallen so joyfully through the world towards. Once again he had seen her hurt and disappointed, crashing into the ground and climbing to her feet alone, without the home she had expected to see upon landing.

A lone rose petal flutters past him out of the corner of his eye, and Oz turns expecting to see it there, velvet red catching the light of the sun.

But it’s gone before he can fully lay his eyes on it.

Oz stands alone under the endless sky.

But there is another one. Red. Like a drop of blood floating on the wind. And this time he watches it struggle to exist, trembling between reality and illusion, before it shatters and becomes dust once more.

Another follows, staying a little longer. And another, this one white. Then yellow. Then red and black.

Lightning.

The element he had chosen sparks between his fingers.

Oz lifts his hand out, up, as if he is reaching for something before him, beyond the veil of perception, searching for an existence he has been waiting for, an existence so precious he will wait for her always. No matter how long she takes.

Green lightning sprouts in front of him, expanding and growing like rose stalks. Out and up, it grasps for sky and wall and floor, connecting everything in this world.

Dust moves across the floor, pushed by an invisible wind that grows in strength, twirls in space until it becomes a tornado dancing in place and blooming with rose petals the colours of four souls he knows too well.

And Oz—

Oz holds his breath as those four souls manifest, drop back into existence.

Ruby blinks at the bright sunlight, her smile blooming with a victory not entirely hers, as she floats right above him. And her beautiful silver eyes land on his face, brightening with familiarity.

“Oz!” She exclaims with delight.

And then gravity sets in, catching her and dragging her down.

“Aaaah!”

Her yell of surprise turns to laughter on the wind, and she spreads her arms to meet him, catching Oz around the neck and burying her face in its crook.

And though she is smaller now, though she is all lithe muscle and simple curves, covered in summer clothes; the force of her fall forces him to stumble back, feet catching on the ground and magic the only real thing that keeps them steady.

Beyond them, her team land on the ground, heaving for breath and relief colouring their eyes.

“It worked,” Yang gasps as Weiss throws her hand over her mouth, seemingly to prevent throwing up.

Ruby giggles in Oz’ arms, clearly a little drunk with aura misuse. “You’ve gotten taller,” she observes, drawing his full attention as if he were attached to a string she has all the power to tug. “I can’t feel the floor.”

“You silly girl,” he scolds. “There’s a limit to being reckless. What were you thinking?”

Ruby giggles again. “That I had a beacon to navigate by?”

And that softens him. More than anything else ever could. More than her strong arms holding on to him, or the way her breath tickles his neck. More than how easily she fits this close to him. Her words bear a different meaning, an attachment that shouldn’t be his but somehow still is.

“Very sweet,” he murmurs.

And with quick movements he swings her from one side to the other, catching her knees with one arm and grasping her waist in a better grip with the other. Ruby squeals at the quick movement as if she were a child playing games, innocent and easy to delight.

But she is exhausted: as soon as he has a more secure hold on her, her grip on his neck tightens and her fingers slide down past his heart to grasp the cloth of his shirt. Her muscles sag and she shrinks away a little more.

Ruby trembles invisibly.

“How far have you travelled from?” He asks her team, trying to keep his concern to himself.

There is a rumbling in the back of his head, a storm rolling in, driven by selfish attachment. She should not look like this, should never be this weak. Strong and bright and beautiful as a full moon, there is nothing that should force her to need carrying by another. It is a new anger. One he hadn’t known before he was Oscar Pine. It feels like lightning in his heart.

Her team share a look. “Vale,” Weiss reports, a little bit of Atlesian hierarchy enabling her to speak beyond her apprehension. “I genuinely thought she would pause on the way, but you know Ruby.”

As she speaks, Yang staggers to her feet and offers a hand to Blake. It is a natural motion, a strong grip on her most precious person, one she has performed countless times before, and Oz sighs in exasperation seeing it.

“I do, indeed.”

He has all the reason in the world to feel envious. And none at all.

“Is she going to be ok?” The golden girl asks, turning her attention back on her sister, reaching a hand out for them.

“Well,” he says, finding a smile before turning his back to her. “This is what we have Jaune for, is it not?”

He isn’t really testing her. He will work with her, and treat her with respect, because it is what he has sworn to do. But a selfish part of him doesn’t entirely trust a child who has been rejected too many times by humanity with a sister who abandoned her once.

In his arms Ruby giggles and lifts a wagging finger as if he’s proven her point. “See?”

Weiss’ sigh of exasperation drifts past him down the hall, and Oz laughs.

“It’s number 108,” he informs them because his hands are full.

“On it,” Weiss says, passing him in a flash.

They’re on one of the top floors of the triangular building that is Shade Academy; a floor reserved for visiting huntsmen and professors. The flat they’ve been given is nothing grand, but it has enough space for a four-man squad and they will somehow have to make it work for eight for the night.

Romance is not so bad, Oz thinks, glancing with a smile back at Yang and Blake gently, silently reassuring each other, when you have too few beds for people to stay in singles.

“Oh, you were right—“ Jaune’s voice floats back to them only to cut off and be replaced by a delighted “Weiss! So that’s who he meant!”

And Oz turns back just in time to see Weiss, tiny, dignified, Atlesian woman that she is, be engulfed in a hug so warm and friendly her feet end up dangling from several inches above the ground.

But friendships are truly real when they can break a wall of ice in spite of two years of separation, and Weiss laughs a rare laugh and throws her arms around Jaune to accept the affection thrown upon her so suddenly.

There’s a zap of pink electricity and then Nora is standing in the door. “Did someone say Weiss? Oh! There she is! I could barely see you, you’re so tiny!”

Weiss emerges from her hug to level Nora’s grinning expression with a mock-glare. “Very funny.”

And Yang and Blake move past Oz to engage in a warm reunion that has him pausing a few feet from them. He’s ensnared in humanity’s toils and trials, in the drama of everyday life and relationships, friendships, he builds along the way. But at times like these he feels a little like an outsider, grasping Ruby in his arms, the only steady presence over the centuries.

And yet it is touching. The warmth and light and affection radiates off their smiles and gestures, like summer sunlight, like an old familiar sweater. And it reminds him, more than anything else, why he keeps coming back, why he bothers with Remnant and its many troubles. It reminds him why it is worth fighting Salem, giving up his life and going through all that pain.

It is for this. For these children. For their present smiles and the smiles of their descendants.

Constant joy is not a guarantee, but the moments we are able to feel it can be expanded upon so easily.

“Wait—“ Nora says, pausing in the middle of a hug with Yang. “Where’s Ruby?”

“Ah,” Yang says, taking a step back.

“She got a little reckless getting here,” Blake explains, laughing nervously, mirroring her partner.

“So she’s a little out of it,” Oz continues for them, drawing attention back on the bright girl now pouting in his hold.

“You make it sound like I have no idea what I’m doing,” she complains, theatrically. “Who do you think taught me? I’m the student of Maria Callavera. Of course, I know what I’m doing.”

“Maria flew a plane while her prosthetic eyes were in desperate need of repair,” Weiss counters. “And picked a fight with an obsessive Ironwood fan that got us in a world of trouble.”

“Exactly!” Ruby says, giggling.

Oz, Yang, and Weiss all sigh in exasperation.

And Nora eyes their fearless leader with some apprehension. “Please tell me that wasn’t how I acted when I misused my semblance.”

“No,” Blake says, drawing out the sound.

“Don’t worry,” Weiss joins in, patting her solemnly on the shoulder, “you had the courtesy to pass out on us.”

“Come on,” Jaune says, shooing them aside so Oz can pass. “Let’s get a look at her before she _really_ passes out.”

* * *

Oz returns late from his meeting with Theodore.

He closes the door on the golden lights of the city just outside the Academy to a silent flat. His team and team RWBY have long since gone to bed, and all that is left to greet him is the pale white moonlight dancing through the air and painting everything in shades of blue and turquoise.

Theodore had sighed and shaken his head, lamenting Oz’ preference for the reckless, but accepted the burden of another squad of huntresses onto the premises.

There are conditions, of course. But there always are.

He shuffles past the doors to the rooms where Weiss, Blake and Yang are sleeping; where Ren, Nora, and Jaune are sleeping, pausing only to look over the back of the long sofa to check on Ruby’s slumbering face.

The sorrowful blue moonlight has stolen the red from her hair so midnight traces her pale skin, but she looks better than she did upon arrival. Relaxed. Energised. Finally sleeping calmly. Her cheekbones stand out more than he remembers of the girl in Atlas, on the borders of tragic adulthood, and her jaw is cut in straight, elegant lines. There is strength, there, in her shoulders, a strength which has always been there and is always growing under the weight of the world she had stolen from him.

Oz drops his coat over her and yawns, returning to the kitchen.

The Long Memory rests against the kitchen counter. And as he produces chocolate from a shelf, milk, sugar, and other utensils float from their places to the counter.

They had had to leave her on the sofa where it had been the easiest to treat her and it had been the easiest to keep an eye on her. Keeping the rooms free of reckless patients also meant giving the others time to straighten their thoughts and minds, to talk, and to sleep in places that feel like a home.

Of course, there’s the added benefit of seeing just a little spark of joy that being close to your romantic partner brings—and since there are only four beds here, to eight people—it had been an easy excuse to sell to at least half the people present.

Only Weiss had looked visibly unimpressed by his matchmaking schemes.

He grins at the hot chocolate forming in his mug. “Ah there’s always one,” he murmurs to himself. Humanity is always lively and full of new personalities. It’s why life continues to be interesting and how he’s kept on his toes, kept from his guilt and melancholia. “I knew she’d be a good match for Ruby.”

Ruby Rose has always been good at keeping to herself, at hiding away from humanity and protecting them out of sight. There are things in her past, terrible things, that have led her to that instinct—an instinct that transcends memory and death—and an instinct he can respect. When it comes from civil war and genocide, what else can you really do but respect it? When it comes from loss of family and friends, at murder at the hands of those you try to protect again, and again, and again… what else can you do but leave her be on her request?

Only she needed people around her when Salem started hunting and experimenting on the last Silver Eyed People remaining. She needed to not be alone, to have those protective friends and that family who was there for her no matter what.

He can still see them, there, in the snow: weapons pointed at any enemy that sought to harm or control her. He just hadn’t expected that enemy to be himself.

“What are you laughing at?”

Oz turns his head to see a tangled mop of black hair and a pair of silver eyes peeking curiously up over the back of the sofa.

“Should you really be asking that?” He counters, lifting his mug in greeting. “With how much you were laughing earlier.”

Ruby’s eyes narrow and she groans, ducking out of sight before he can catch the flush of embarrassment at her own actions, except for the red flash of ears as her hair flies up. And a rose petal that belies her urge to run away.

Green electricity crawls across the red surface before both lightning and petal scatter into dust.

“That was really stupid,” she murmurs.

“Well, we’ve all done stupid,” he says, jumping effortlessly over the back of the sofa and catching the hot chocolate he’d sent flying so it falls back into his mug.

Ruby glares up at him from between her fingers. “Only one of us to show off,” she counters sourly.

Oz grins.

“Give me that!” She adds, sitting up quickly, and snatching the mug out of his hand before he can stop her.

“Hey.”

“Don’t complain,” she says in a tone a little too much like Weiss’. “I’m the recovering patient here, remember? You can’t just keep hot chocolate from a recovering patient.”

“Fine,” he allows, resting his chin in his hand and observing her smug, drawn-out drink of his chocolate.

Ruby exhales blissfully and closes her eyes to enjoy the taste, all theatrics—and Oz wonders which of them is really a show-off; she has a way of enjoying things that’s really meant to rub it in she stole them from him in the first place.

“How are you feeling?”

One silver eye trickled open to meet his gaze.

“Better,” she allows, leaning over to rest the mug on the coffee table. “A little.... fuzzy. Which is unusual for Jaune’s treatment.”

“Ah,” Oz murmurs, shifting awkwardly in his seat.

Ruby barely seems to notice, too preoccupied with rubbing her thumb and index finger together. Her aura flashes red along her arm and wrist for a single moment, and when she separates her fingers lightning connects them, flickering along her skin, before vanishing again.

Ruby’s eyes narrow.

“Oz...”

“Well,” he says, hesitating. He lifts his hand to scratch the back of his neck and glances at her out from under his eyelashes. “It’s probably because electricity can do that?”

Ruby gasps in outrage, turning her entire body and her entire annoyance directly on him. “What did you do?”

Oz leans back on the chaise, holding up his hands in an attempt to deflect her. “Yes. Yes, it was my idea,” he admits, “but it was good practice for Jaune to act as a medium between two auras instead of just giving all of his own aura to one patient, and—“

“So, you were using me as a guinea pig?”

“What? _No_ ,” he exclaims. “This isn’t the first time we’ve tried it. It’s just that Jaune’s aura isn’t big enough to fill the gaping hole you drained out of your soul.”

And finally, finally, his desperation to explain the situation seems to get to her, and she falls back on her haunches, no longer hovering over him, formidable and beautiful and—

Ruby sighs and glares at him. “What do you mean Jaune’s aura isn’t big enough? Doesn’t he have the greatest supply out of all of us?”

—and so, so clever.

_Dammit._

“Weeeeeell,” he enunciates, looking away. “All of us _except—_ “

“Don’t brag!”

Not that he was going to. Oz grins.

He never adores her more than when she’s being fierce. Whether she’s going toe to toe with Ironwood in a moment of absolute protectiveness, whether she’s facing off against a bully or a Grimm three times her size, or whether she’s standing up to him, seeing through him to his flaws and his ego, and the harm he does in fear, telling him to cut it out. She’s the most beautiful when she’s fierce, because Ruby always knows what is right, and when she is fierce she trusts that knowledge to her core.

And right now, it doesn’t have to be anything more than fun and safe.

“Why are you smirking?” She demands, watching him owlishly with eyes that reflect the moonlight. “It’s giving me the creeps.”

“Ow,” he says, touching his chest theatrically, “that hurts, Miss Rose.”

“I’ve schemed with you before, Oz. I know what it looks like,” she complains, crossing her arms. “And don’t call me that. It feels weird.”

Another smile. “As you wish.”

He closes his eyes and waits. In this peaceful place with their teammates sleeping soundly out of sight, with the moon watching over them, shining brightly so they won’t stray in the darkness, it is easy to wait. It is bliss to wait.

Especially because he is honoured by her presence in the moment between one sentence and the next. He gets to sit beside her, relax beside her, and breathe the same air as her.

And he doesn’t really need anything else in this world.

This is where he wants to be the most, in the silence between breaths, hiding away among roses and forgetting, for a single passing moment, the rest of the world.

“So, what did you mean?” Ruby asks.

When he lets one eye crack open to watch her cradling the mug of hot chocolate in her hands and eyeing him curiously again.

And Oz wonders how he could ever have kept any secret from her before.

“When you were bragging, I mean,” she adds quickly, when he doesn’t immediately respond.

“I wasn’t bragging,” he observes, smiling. “If you perceived that as bragging, it might be more correct to say that I was praising. You’ve trained your aura well.”

“What?” She demands, critically. “Better than Jaune? I sincerely doubt that.”

“Well, Ruby,” he says, his smile growing as he reaches across the distance to poke her nose, “Jaune isn’t born part of a people specifically gifted by the God of Creation to bring light to the world, now is he?”

And for a single passing moment he has the pleasure of watching her flush at the intimate gesture.

She batters his hand away distractedly, but doesn’t move away. “Don’t bring that up now,” she says. “It almost feels like cheating.”

Which has him laughing, again. “How is it cheating? Where else would you get the power to do that from? Emotion? No. If only it were that simple, any goodhearted fool consumed by love would be able to do it,” he says, maybe a little wistful, maybe a little envious. “And if that is cheating, what is my magic?”

“Cheating,” comes the prompt reply. “This is why we’re having so much trouble with Salem, too,” she declares, flopping back down on the sofa and pulling the blanket back up, not noticing the coat that crawls along to cover her. “Because you two keep cheating.”

“In my defence I tried to even the playing field.”

Ruby huffs. “Not your wisest move ever.”

And Oz sighs, sinking back into the sofa cushions. “I suppose not.”

He’s forced too many people into impossible situations with his system, has forced them to suffer as the boys and men whose bodies he has shared, have suffered. But at least he feels he has improved upon it somewhat; no matter how much time passes, the person who remains in control is not the soul that passes into a new body, but the soul that always belonged to that body.

It’s the only thing that keeps the guilt from eating him alive, as it does on so many other topics.

Beside him, Ruby eyes his darkening expression pensively. She gives him a moment to dwell on his own self-hatred, and then cuts through his thoughts.

She catches him up on everything she and her team have been up to since they parted in Atlas; catches him up on her family, on making up with Yang and reuniting with their father; catches him up on Peter Port, Bartholomew Oobleck, and Glynda Goodwitch; on the state of Beacon Academy and Vale itself. His kingdom. His friends. The people and places he misses most in this world—except for the one person at his side right this moment.

“Oh!” She concludes brightly. “And Penny helped me get rid of that Wyvern I left on top of Beacon tower! Now they can finally start rebuilding and you can get your office back!”

There’s a sweetness to her conservation of what was, her return to their days of peace, and her smile at the thought of it. But if there’s anything Oz has learnt from Ruby it’s that they can’t stop or falter, they have to keep moving forward.

If there’s anything he doesn’t want to do it’s to go back to that time of being locked up at the top of Beacon tower, in the cell he’d designed for himself. He doesn’t really deserve this freedom, all this colour and hope for the future. But he can still hear the clicks of gears and see the greys of the clouds that accompanied him for more than a lifetime.

“Too bad,” he complains, leaning his chin in his hand and smirking at her. “I quite liked the idea of the Girl and the Dragon being the end of Beacon Academy.”

Ruby blinks at him for a moment, comprehending his words and letting her mind be distracted, before she mock-glares at him.

“Stop turning everything into a fairy tale!” She complains, smacking his hand away so he nearly faceplates into the cushions.

Yes, this is the Ruby he knows. Sensible, focused on life’s beauty when it’s lived in reality. A world of charm was the one she’d promised him if he opened his eyes to it.

And yet Oz—

Oz can’t help but laugh. He clutches his free hand around his stomach and twists on the cushions as it peels out of him, a little too joyful, a little too silly.

Because she never quite seems to see that no matter how full of tragedy, no matter how full of sorrow and nightmares, monsters and witches, the lives they live together are always fairy tales.

Beside him, Ruby pouts with all the dignity of a five year old.

“Don’t laugh! I’ll get attached to you!”

Oz snickers again and dries his eye, peeking up at her adorable insulted expression. She scrunches up her nose and lifts her shoulders, her unkempt hair making her look more like a troll than is probably good.

And Oz—

Oz can’t help but smile.

She’s too pretty for her own good, too sweet and fierce and adorable. And he wants to touch her so badly, wants to let his emotions guide him a little, wants to trust love and creation and her light.

But he knows he never will.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

He knows he will never be able to reach across that distance and touch her cheek with adoration. He knows he will never move her with a kiss or melt into her to forget the world they are both meant to protect.

All of that. All of that would only bring a searing pain of memories and bad experiences. All of that would remind him of cold white hands on his skin, on his face, red eyes staring back at him that he can never unsee. And he doesn’t dare guess the pain it would cause her, cause Ruby, the present blooming Rose in front of him, if he touched her with Oscar’s hands.

She might wither right there in his grasp.

So all he can do is touch her with his words, his stories, and his dreams.

As always.

Ruby exhales and lies back down in her spot, curling up like a cat to watch him.

“You know,” she says, reaching out and poking his brow. “You think too much.”

A gust of wind moves through the night, pushing apart the clouds and letting moonlight pass to cradle her face and play in her fluttering hair. It catches on dust that dances in the air like silver stars and paints her in hues of blue and white.

It stills his heart a little, the vision before him, her gestures and words, reducing it to a slow beat, heavy and languid all at the same time.

“I know you have so much to worry about and so many memories to carry,” she says, “so many that it would take Jinn countless lifetimes just to reveal all your secrets. But I still think living in the present is the best, and letting the past only be a force that pushes us to try better in the future.”

“I try,” he offers, resting his chin down on his arm and his weight on his stomach. “I try. And, yet, somehow it always seems like you have to remind me. In one way or another.”

He makes mistakes. He always makes mistakes. Whether he relaxes his guard or he _tries._ He could build a castle and shape society to his whims, he could live in a hut and share his magic, his power, with others, he could teach and teach and teach; and still he never has the power to foresee all the consequences of his actions.

“And that,” Ruby says, smiling, as if she can read his thoughts, “is what makes you human.”

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve told me all evening.”

She laughs, quiet, drowsily. “You’re welcome.”

Oz doesn’t always feel like human. He feels apart from humanity. He tries his best to be apart from them, to let them make their choices, to not influence where he need not influence. The Great War had been too much, had taken too much out of him, had made him too great a player in their history once again, and he doesn’t want to steal their choice from them. Not when it is the most precious of gifts.

But Ruby is right; he is only human. And he has made his mistakes, his selfish, selfish actions have caused harm. On the people he cares for the most.

Even if he’d had the best intentions.

And maybe it’s his intentions and his attachments, and his selfish refusal to let go and yet be parted that makes him human the most.

Sometimes he wonders if love is what gives humanity their soul.

After all, he feels the most alive when he is right here in her presence, when he is right beside her. It is all he will ever ask for, all he will ever shy away from. All that matters.

Somehow.

Even when they are lying together on a sofa, watching the light of a broken moon dance through the night and light up the world in simple shades of hope and peace. Even when it is just a drowsy, calm moment where nothing really happens. All that is precious in this world, all that matters, is the quiet beating of her heart just out of hearing range, and the joy that runs like golden honey through his veins.

“Hey, Oz.”

He hums in response, turning his head to look up at her.

Ruby looks like she’s already half way back to sleep, her beautiful silver eyes hooded and dark in the shade of long black lashes.

“What is it?”

“Do you know if other people reincarnate? Other than you?”

“I’ve met people who share the same face and journeys across different lifetimes, yes,” he allows. “The same auras, as well. But I do not know if it’s something that applies to all equally, or what processes bring it about.”

Ruby hums in thought, closing her eyes momentarily. If she were a cat she would probably purr.

“Do they ever remember, the way you do?”

“No,” he says. And then remembers Summer, and Nasrin and Selene, and Dawa, and Artemis, and, and all the other women that come before Ruby, so many he could dedicate a tree to each in the Forest of Forever Fall, even before he’d met Summer or Ruby. And he amends. “Maybe in dreams.”

Ruby exhales and he knows, even without looking, that she is smiling. “Always in dreams.”

“Always,” he agrees, laughing at the consistency of his worldview that she’s gently criticising.

He’s never asked. He’s never had the courage to bring it up, to question what she knows, too afraid what the truth might bring to life, too grateful, always, for what she is in any given moment, every day so much the same, yet so different, she never ceases to amaze him.

“Hey, Oz,” she says again.

“Yes, Ruby?”

“Is this a dream?”

“If it were what would you do?”

When he lifts his head to study her, curious as to what she might say or do next, she’s already watching him with silver eyes, dancing and alive and more awake than he thought of her.

Ruby considers his words for a long moment, and he wonders, hopes, for a ridiculous spark of information, for that moment when she tells him freely that she remembers him and all their days, all the years of joy, and all the time that has slipped away between their fingers.

But she doesn’t.

Instead she lowers her eyes a little shyly, a little awkwardly, hesitating before catching his gaze “I would ask you who you are. I do that a lot in dreams.”

And somehow Oz can’t help but laugh. It feels odd. Even in this lifetime they have greeted each other twice: she has named him and Oscar has named him. But he is not Ozpin anymore, and he is not Oscar, and he is not quite the Oz that resided with Oscar. Perhaps third time is the charm, or perhaps that is another illusion.

“A new introduction, then? That seems appropriate.”

Maybe he should just follow her advice and live in the present…

Ruby doesn’t quite smile. But her silver eyes dance in the moonlight. “But no illusions this time, ok? No bent truths.”

She would see through those anyway, at this point. She has already warned him of as much; she knows he weaves himself in secrets and spells and illusions, she knows the skin he wears is not quite his own, the soft smiles and sarcastic lilts to his voice are tones he has inherited from another.

Not that he has any reason to hide from her anymore. Hiding her away, hiding himself away, running away, keeping secrets. It had all been for naught. And if she hadn’t forced him into the light of truth, to tell the truth, his secrecy would have caused so much more harm than her knowing had… in the end.

So this time he will try and come clean.

This time he will confess.

This time he will selfishly burden her with his feelings and attachments.

“Very well,” he says, climbing into a sitting position, and offering her a hand to help her up as well.

She passes out of the moonlight then, her blankets and covers slipping away, so only her red hood rests across her lap.

She blinks up at him with wide, beautiful silver eyes, precious, adorable, and glorious; a living miracle; his light, his spark of hope, his home and his dream. The illusion he weaves of a happy ending belongs all to her, its life only as long as her presence beside him.

She could hurt him, drag him through all his terrible past, reject him, and throw him away, and he would fall for her again and again and again. Every day, in every life. No matter who or where they are.

She is not a shooting star, passing beyond his view in a moment.

She is the eternal moon in his sky, guiding him through the darkness, after all.

Oz smiles.

“I am the blessed person who remembers every time The Girl Who Fell Through the World got up, dusted herself off, and continued moving forward. I am the boy who fell in love with The Warrior in the Woods. I am the fool in The Girl in the Tower, the hero of the Lost Fable. Or the tyrant, depending on your view. I’m the Infinite Man, though I have forgotten their names. I am the King of Vale who slaughtered thousands. I am Ozma, Orion, Odin, Ozpin. I am Oscar Pine. I am all of that. I am Oz, but...”

He grasps the hood lying in her lap, the fabric a familiar comfort between his fingers as he confesses his greatest secrets to her. Again.

“I am also just a soul,” he concludes, laying the hood over her head so it looks more like a bloodied veil. The trails his fingers along the red string of fate tying him to her. “That loves you.”

This confession, his heart laid bare, emotions he has expressed before and will most likely state again, another day, in another lifetime. He has opened his eyes to the charm of life one more time, and trusted in love, trusted in light and creation; in her.

“Without regret or remorse, selfishly, ardently,” he adds, smiling as her cheeks begin to flush. “Without expectation, without hope of a response or reciprocation. Truly, without condition.”

Ruby’s eyes are wide and she gapes up at him, her blush burning a deeper and deeper red into her skin, until her face glows almost as brightly as her eyes. Her eyes, her beautiful silver eyes, which catch the light of the moon and glow, just a little, and she is lovely, so breathtakingly pretty, and Oz—

Oz wishes he could selfishly think that she were reflecting his love back at him, that her response had been one of mutual affection. But he knows better.

He could say more, could express more, could wax poetic and express every single little thought and emotion, on her beauty, her brightness, her kindness and optimism, and how she always, always amazes him. But he can see the way her mind stutters and Oz takes mercy on her.

In a single, selfish, action he lets his hand follow his words across the distance and cradles her fingers gently in his, lifting them to his lips.

“Please forgive this transgression,” he murmurs against them, and retreats.

He holds his expression steady, fights to keep his smile to himself, to have soft sympathy for her embarrassment and shyness.

“See you in the morning, Ruby,” he adds, and turns to leave.

“Ah!” She exclaims, and scrambles after him on hands and feet, catching his hand just out of reach. “Wait.”

Hope, like electricity in his veins, shoots through his body, catching his heart off guard. And he tries to squash the hope that she sparks in him, does his best to be simply surprised at her quick recovery time.

“What is it?”

But it’s difficult when her eyes dance fierce and beautiful and silver, and her flushed face is bent in folds of determination. She doesn’t back away, refuses to shy away.

And Oz waits.

“Don’t run away,” she says. Swallows. Her eyes flicker away, nervously, her hand grasping his as if it is a lifeline. And then she looks back. “Don’t run away again.”

And it softens something in him. His resolve, perhaps. And Oz smiles. “I will never run away from you again,” he promises. “I am here, beside you. Until you don’t want me anymore. Until our story has been told. I won’t move until the end. I promise.”

He has made this promise before. He has vowed similar things before, has dedicated himself, has offered himself, has given her his heart and soul, whatever of him she needed to steal her from her loneliness. And she has always smiled and declined, has always kept her emotions to herself. He has only ever been able to imagine her gratitude for his words.

But this time—on this day—Ruby’s face is awash with relief. All the red floods out of her cheeks, all the shyness vanishing from her expression, and for a fleeting moment her eyes swim with emotion.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Oz squeezes her hand. “Always.”

When he glances back in the door, it is closing on an image of Ruby Rose, drying another tear from her silver eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
